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\ 



"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 



THE CONSPIRACY 



OF LEADING MEN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 



TO DESTROY 



THE AMERICAN UNION 



BY THEIR WORDS AND ACTS 



ANTECEDENT AND SUBSEQUENT TO THE REBELLION. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON MILES, 

OF PHILADELPHIA. 



NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY J. WALTER & CO., 

19 CITY HALL SQUARE. 

1864. 

T 






NOT ^ BY TH ■ IM BLISHERS. 



Events of the past few years have demonstrated the existence of an organized 
effort to make important changes in the Government of the United States ; not in 
the legitimate manner provided by the Constitution, but insidiously, stealthily at 
first, growing bolder by degrees, and at length when circumstances seemed to 
warrant immunity from personal danger, unblushingly avowed, by the less cautious 
aiders and abettors of the treasonable .work. 

In the accompanying pages, the author, in a clear, logical, and eloquent manner, 
has grouped numerous startling proofs, and from these argued the case with un- 
usual abihty and fairness, and shown that the charge of "conspiracy" is justly 
applied. But while clear proof is given of a cherished purpose, long entertained, 
to subvert the Constitution by perverting and destroying its plainest provisions, 
it does not appear that the design has ever been openly announced with a view of 
bringing it distinctly and boldly to the notice of the public. On the contrary, 
when charged with aiming at the subversion of the Government, the answer has 
been that their purpose was not to destroy, but to save it. 

Meantime, a large portion of the people, not understanding the questions at issue, 
have been unable to discriminate between the real friends of liberty and law, and 
the secret enemies of both. The crime planned and attempted, has been greater 
in magnitude and in its contemplated result, than they were prepared to believe 
possible. Hence, when the charge has been made and repeated, many have re- 
garded it as one of those extravagant accusations which frequently arise from 
partisan asperity. But the people are becoming hourly more enlightened upon 
those subjects which enable them to appreciate the contemplated wrong, and they 
have resolved to know the whole truth of the matter. A severe inquisition will 
probe this question to the lieart. The real conspirators will be known, and will 
receive the merited rewards of their deeds. 

Most respectfully, but earnestly, we urge upon every champion of the Constitu- 
tion, every friend of civil liberty, to lend his indivdiual influence zealously in the 
circulation of this most valuable document. Nothing to be compared with it for 
immediate and imjwrtant effect has yet appeared. One hundred thousand 
copies, at least, should be in the hands of the people before the Sth of Novem- 
ber. Contributions to this object may bo sent to the publishers, and all funds 
furnished for this purpose, will be immediately used in the gratuitous distribution 
of the pamphlet J. W. & CO. 

New Yobk, October, 10, 1864. 



"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 



At no other period' since the morninj? of liberty (hiwned upon this 
favored land, has it been so manifestly the duty of the people to discard par- 
tisan bias, and all those potent influences which distract and mislead the 
judgment ; in order that calmness, soberness, solemnity, and earnestness, 
may characterize reflection, discussion, and action ; for by theSe influ- 
ences alone can our country be saved from certain, speedy, and irretriev- 
able ruin. In the halcyon days of the Republic, those good old days of 
" Virtue, Liberty, and Independence," the political questions which 
engaged the attention of the people were multifarious. Questions of 
revenue, of finance, the improvement of harbors and rivers ; the distribu- 
tion of the proceeds of public lands among the States, and the occupa- 
tion of those lands by the sturdy pioneer. 

My fellow-countrymen, these questions, and many others of like import, 
were once regarded as possessing vital inrferest for the people of our 
common country. Alas ! They no longer possess an interest for you. 

As when a great calamity casts its gloomy shadow over our individual 
household, all minor evils are forgotten in the anxiety occasioned by the 
one overwhelming affliction, so this unspeakable calamity which has 
visited our national household has driven from our minds all thought of 
those legitimate governmental questions, whose very discussion was the 
best indication of peace, contentment, happiness, and prosperity, such as 
no other people under the broad canopy of heaven were ever permitted to 
enjoy. No, my countrymen — no ! one question alone is worthy of your 
deliberation now. It is a question that freemen are asking one of an- 
other with kindling eye and throbbing heart, What CAN BE DONE TO 
RESCUE FROM THE GRASP OF DESPOTIC POWER THE PRICELESS JEWEL 
OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY ? This is the vital question, that towers in 
colossal proportions above all others. You, citizens of America, upon 
the solemn responsibility which you owe, not alone to yourselves, but to 
latest posterity, must answer on the eighth of November next. Let me 
adjure you to remember that upon the response which you shall make, is 
involved all that can make life desirable to an American citizen. 

Let us, then, Freemen of America, resolve by all the inspiring memories 
of the past, by all the imperilled interests of the present, by all our anxious 
hopes in the future, that the Constitution, the laws, and the Union of 
these States shall be maintained and defended against treason, in every 
form, whether it be arrayed under the flaunting banner of Southern 
secession, or under the atrocious and contemptible, because insidi- 
ous and cowardly black flag of Northern Abolitionism. 



4 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 

Is it not amazing that so many of the honest yeomanry of the country 
can be so blinded by party prejudice, so trammelled by party discipline as 
still to array themselves under a banner that for thirty years has had em- 
blazoned upon its folds, in characters so plain that none need misunder- 
stand, those very doctrines of disunion and discord, which ai*e now so 
falsely charged upon the Democracy of the country ? Yet, so it is, — a 
lamentable fact. Although the rank and file of all political organizations 
are honest and well meaning, they are liable to be cajoled and misled by 
wily, selfish, and unscrupulous demagogues, made willing victims of their 
own destruction. 

While history records some examples of voluntary surrender of liberty 
by the people, under the baleful teachings of artful, ambitious men, its 
pages will be searched in vain for a parallel to that self-stultification, 
moral blindness, prejudice, fanaticism, or by whatsoever name it may be 
called, through whose maddening influence a large portion of the free 
citizens of this enlightened and most favored land, are, at this very mo- 
ment, deliberately riveting the manacles of despotism upon their own free 
limbs. 

I most respectfully entreat every fair-minded and reasonable Eepub- 
lican to suspend for a brief season those partisan prejudices which blind- 
fold him to the light of reason, and render him deaf to the voice of fair 
discussion. I care not to appeal to the passions of men. I prefer to ad- 
dress myself to their honest, sober reflections. Unless, indeed, it may 
be said, 

"O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts. 
And men have lost their reason I" 

Words of wisdom seem to be lost amid the shrieking whirlwind of pas- 
sion, the tread of marshalled hosts, the clash of glittering steel, the dis- 
cordant bellowing of ponderous artillery, and the crackling embers of 
conflagrated cities ; and when at length " some dreary pause between," 
and sympathizing Night has cast her dusky mantle over the horror of 
these scenes, hark ! another sound, more terrible than the din of battle, 
breaks upon the stillness of the midnight hour. Alas ! for that wail of 
anguish whose woful cadence, rising from fields of carnage, is floated to 
every cottage and mountain-home throughout the broad area of this once 
bright and peerless, now bleeding and disti-acted land. 

Let us then, in the first place, endeavor to brush away the cobwebs 
which the spider, Abolition, has woven about the eyelids of so many con- 
servative and well-meaning men, in order that they may be enlightened 
in regard to some, at least, of the numerous heresies of the Republican 
creed : prominent among which, and perhaps the most mischievous, is 
that of confounding the Administration of the Government with the Gov- 
ernment itst'lf. This is a cardinal error, and betrays a misapprehension 
of the true theory of our governmental structure. A little reflection, un- 
biased by party zeal, would reveal the nakedness of this fallacy. 

Republicans clamor for an unconditional support of the Government, 
meaning the Administration. Democrats contend for an unconditional 
support of the Government, meaning the Constitution and the laws. 



"to all whom it may concern. 5 

Republicans arguo that the Adiiunistratioii, for tlui time Ix'iiif^, in the 
Goveniincnt. Di'iiiocrats tleuy the correctness of this proposition. 

I hohl as an axiom, that the Constitution of tiie United States, einlx. dy- 
ing in its provisions tlie will of the soveurion I'koI'LK is, ^^er tte. the 
Oovernment of tlie United States. That Constitution i)r(>vides for its own 
administration in the election by the people of agents, with power to 
those agents to appoint subordinates. The official titles of said principal 
agents, their terms of office, their duties and their salaries, being fixed 
and designated hy the people in their Constitution. And whenever, and 
by whomsoever, addition to or subtraction from that fundamental law is 
attempted, in ever so minute a degree — save in the* manner written and 
provided therein ; or whenever or by whomsoever another law is attempt- 
ed to be substituted for this supreme law, the person or persons so oft'end- 
ing are guilty of, at least, moral treason to the Govennnent of the United 
States. 

How natural that the author of the "Higher Law" doctrine, should 
also be the author of the following words, addressed to Lord Lyons in 
November, 1861 : 

" My Lord, I can touch a bell on my right hand, and order the arrest 
of a citizen of Ohio; I can touch the bell again, and order the irnprison- 
ment of a citizen of New York; and no power on earth, except that of 
the President, can release them. Can the Queen of England do so 
much .'" 

I wonder if it did not occur to Lord Lyons, when these precious words 
were uttered, that it might have been better for those '^citizens of Ohio 
and New York," had their forefathers been content to remain subjects of 
King George the Third. The Queen of England certainly cannot "do 
so much." There are but few Despots in the world who would dare " do 
so much." Perhaps the Empires of Japan and China, the dominions of 
the Sultan of Turkey, the King of Dahomey, and the United Stales of 
America ! are the only Governments within whose realms there can be 
done " so much." What higher claim has any De.spot ever advanced 
than the unconditional support of his subjects ? The difference between 
a Despotism and a Kepublic is in this : that while a Despot claims uncon- 
ditional obedience from the peojile to his will ; in a Uepublic like ours, 
the sovereign people demand unconditional obedience from tlu^ir agent to 
their (the people's) will, as expressed in their written Constitution. 

To admit that unconditional allegiance is due from the people to the 
Administration, of their own creation, is to admit that the people resign 
their sovereignty to the Administration ; and inasmuch as there has been 
no interregnum between the expiration of one Administration and the 
commencement of another, it follows, as a logical deduction (according 
to the theory of the Republicans) that ever since the election of General 
Washington, we have been merely the subjects of a long line of sove- 
reign Administrations! Our familiar vaunt, "tlie sovereign people," has 
been a shallow pretence — a delusion. 

If the Republican theory be correct, then I admit I have no right, save 
by permission of my sovereign, to write this address, or, persisting in so 



6 ''TO ALL ^Y^OM IT MAY CONCERN." 

doing, I shall have no right to complain if the iron gripe which Despots 
usually fasten on the throats of those who defy their authority, should 
clutch at mine. 

This is certainly an important consideration, and worthy of the most seri- 
ous reflection of every citizen, whether Republican or Democrat, who here- 
tofore lias indulged the belief that he was one of the SOVEREIGN people. 
Meanwhile, let us turn over a few pages of familiar history. Seventy- 
seven years ago, on the 17th of September, that matchless work of wis- 
dom, the Federal Constitution, perfect in all its proportions, came forth 
from the hands of its creatoi'S. Go with me, in memory, to the city of 
Philadelphia, on the 14th of May, 1787. On that day, there assembled 
in the now venerable Hall of Independence, a Convention, composed of 
men whose names are written in characters of flame on the scroll of im- 
mortality ; whose glorious deeds deserve to be recorded on the tablet of 
every freeman's heart. From the 14th of May to the 17th of September, 
those sages were engaged in earnest, prayerful deliberation ; and what 
was the burden of their anxiety during all those months ? 

You, my countrymen, each individual of you — your happiness and 
mine — your liberties and mine ! The great problem to be solved was the 
construction of a coufederative system of Governmeiit, while yet pre- 
serving, in perfect distinctness aiid vigor, the sovereignty of each indi- 
vidual State ; in order thereby .to perpetuate to their latest posterity those 
inestimable political blessings, which, after seven long years of toil, of 
blood, of poverty, destitution, and horror, they had wrung from the tyrant 
of Britain. This was the grand problem, which, during that period, from 
May until September, claimed the God-like intellect, wisdom, and devo- 
tion of men clothed in the vesture of nature's nobility — heroes, patri- 
ots, sires — our fathers, — a race of men whom God will vouchsafe to the 
world but once. 

Read the immortal record — James Madison and John Blair of Virginia, 
the two Piuckueys of South Carolina, Langdon of New Hampshire, Sher- 
man of Connecticut, Alexander Hamilton of New York, Livingston of 
New Jersey, Franklin, Mililin, IngersoU, the two Morris's, and Clymer 
of Pennsylvauia, Dickenson of Delaware, Carroll of ^Maryland, Williamson 
of North Carolina, Baldwin of Georgia, — these are some of the names. 
And then we read the name of one, presiding over that august Conven- 
tion, wiio, e\(H auau^i i.; i uok o laJ, -laads mujesticalty proannent. 
The peerless example for the study of mankind, created, as it were, to 
animate our race in every age and in every clime, to ennobling aspirations, 
and virtuous deeds — a name encircled with the etfulgwut light of its own 
undying glory — a name enshrined in the inmost chambers of every heart, 
where virtue and the love of liberty delight to dwell — the name of one, 
whom monsters, like Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Chiever, and Beecher 
desecrate, on the same principle which causes vice and uncli'anness to 
abhor tlit- presence of virtue and purity — the name of one, whose sacred 
ashes reposing in the bosom of his own beh)Ved Virginia, beh)iig equally 
to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and every other State, and will 
not be surrendered by a patriotic and sturdy yeomanry. 



\ 



"to all wjiom it may CONCKKN." 7 

Yes, my fi-llow-countryincn, at tli<i portals <if tlic tonili of Wasliini^ton 
sits the genius of Liberty, State Sovereignty, and Union; and while thn 
echo of fratricidal artillery disturbs the silence of that halhtwed spot, let 
us invoke the lofty spirit of the Father of his country, to exorcise the 
demon of discord from the land he loved so well ; that hate, and passion, 
and wild fury, and fanaticism may flee the American heart, while love, and 
reason, and generous counsel, may animate to the great work of rescuing 
from everlasting ruin, the priceless legacy which he bequeathed to us. 

In transmitting to Congress a copy of the Constitution, and the resolu- 
tions of the Convention, recommending its submission to the States for 
ratification, George Washington, who performed that duty, thus wrote : 

"The Constitution which xve now present, is the result of a spirit of 
amity, and of that mutual deference and concession, which, the pecu- 
liarity of our political situation rendered indispensable. That it is liable 
to as few exceptions as could reasonably be expected, we hope and believe ; 
that it may promote the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all, 
and secure her freedom and happiness is our most ardent wish," 

In his immortal Farewell Address, he writes : V Hence, likewise, they 
will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establinhments, 
which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and 
which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.^' 

Again he writes in the same Address : " The bases of our political sys- 
tems, is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of 
government; but the Constitution, which at any time exists, till changed, 
by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly olfliga- 
tory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to 
establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey 
the established government^ 

Mark the language that Washington uses. It has been said that 
'■''words are things;" General Washington does not use the singular 
noun base of our political system, but he employs the plural nouns bases, 
systems, and constitutions of Government. I repeat the sentence : " The 
bases of our political systems, is the right of the people to make and alter 
their constitutions of government," &u. 

Now, if Washington had written ten folio volumes, upon whose every 
page he had declared that the Federal government was the creature of the 
so ereign Stntes. and not that the States are creatures of the Federal 
government (which is the theory of the present Ilepublican party), he 
could not have more clearly and emphatically announced his opinion. 

Let it be observed, also, that he uses the words " constitution" and 
"government" synonymously, proving that he regarded the Constitution 
as the Government. Again he writes : 

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by 
the spirit of revenge, natural to pai'ty dissension, which, in ditlVrent ages 
and countries, has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a 
frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and per- 
manent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result, gradually 
incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power 
of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, 



b "TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 

more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to 
the purposes of his own elevation on the iiuiNS OF public liberty. " 

*' It is important, likewise, that the hahits of thinking, in a free country, 
should inspire caution in those intrustid with its administration, to con- 
fine themstdves within tlieir respective constiiutioual spheres; avoiding, 
in the exercise of the powers of one department, to encroach upon another. 
The s[iirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the de- 
partments in one. and thus to create, — whateverthe form of government, — 
a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness 
to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy 
us of the truth of this position." "If in the opinion of the people, the 
distribution or modification of the powers be in any particular wrong, let 
it be corrected by an amendment, in the way which the Constitution desig- 
nates. But let there be no change by usurpation, for though 
this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary 
weapon, by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must 
always greatly overbalance, in permanent evil, any partial or transient 
benefit which the use can, at any time, yield." 

In these extracts, you have Washington's opinion of the Constitution. 
Says James Madison, in his first inaugural address, delivered in 1809 : 

" Prefer in all cases, amicable discussion, and reasonable accommoda- 
tions of differences, to a decision of them by an appeal to arms ; to hold 
the Union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness ; to sup- 
port the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its 
limitations as in its authorities ; to respect the rights and authorities 
reserved to the States, and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and 
essential to the success of the general system ;" " to preserve in their full 
energy, the other salutary provisions, in behalf of private and personal 
rights, and of the freedom of the press." "Always remembering that an 
armed and trained MILITIA is the firmest bulwark of republics — that with- 
out standing ti/'mies, their liberty can never be in danger, NOR with large 
ones safe!" 

Said Thomas Jefi"erson, in his first inaugural, in 1801 : 

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will 
of the nmjority is, in all cases, to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must 
be reasonable ; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal 
laws 7nmt protect, and to violate, would, be oppression." " And let us 
reflect, that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance un- 
der wliich mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little, 
• if we countenance a political intolm-ance as despotic, as wicked, and 
capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions." 

Again, Mr. Jefferson writes : 

" The support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most 
competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bul- 
jwarks against anti-republican tendencies;'" "A JEALOUS care of the 
RIGHT of electidn bv THE PEOPLE. The supremacy of the civil over 
thu military authority, (economy in the public expense, that labor may 
be lightly burdened. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and 
freedom of person, under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trials 
by juri<-s impartially selected. These principles form the bright constel- 
lation which has gone Ijefore us, and guided our steps through an age of 
revoluli.Mi and reformation. The wisdom of our sages, and blood of our 
heine-, have been devoted U> their attainment; they should be the creed 
of our [x.litical faith, the text of civic instruction', the touchstone, by 



"to all whom it may CONX'KKN. 9 

which to try the services of those we trust; niid shoulil we wnmlcr fn.ni 
them in moments of error or ularin. let us liasteii to retrace our steps, uud 
to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety." 

Says Chief-Justice Story, a name universally esteemed, referring^ to 
the high responsibilities of the people, to prt-servc their Constituiiou from 
usurping power : 

" It must perish, if there be not that vital spirit in the people, which 
alone can nourish, sustain, and direct all its movements. It is in vain 
that Statesmen shall form plans of government, in whicli tlie hcautv and 
harmony of a republic shall be emb<idied in visibU- order, shall 1)^ built up 
on solid substructions, and adorned by every useful urnauu-nt, if the inliab- 
tauts suffer the silent power of time to dilapidate its walls, or crumble its 
massy supporters into dust; if the assaults from without are never re- 
sisted, and the rottenness and mining from within are never guarded 
against, who can preserve the riglits and lil)erties of the people, when 
they shall be abandoned by themselves? Who shall keep watch in the 
Temple, when the watchmen sleep at their posts? Who shall call on the 
people to redeem their possessions, and revive the republic, when their 
hands have deliberately and corruptly surrendered them to the oppressor, 
and have built the prisons, or dug the graves of their own friends ? Thia 
dark picture, it is to be hoped, will never be applicable to the Kepublic 
of America ; and yet it affords a warning, which, like all the lessons of 
past experience, we are not permitted to disregard ; America, free, happy, 
and enlightened as she is, must rest the preservation of her rights and 
liberties upon the virtue, independence, justice, and sagacity of the 
people. If either fail, the Republic is gone. Its shadow may remain 
with all the pomp, and circumstance, and trickery of government, but 
its vital power will have departed. In America, the dem^igogue may rise 
as well as elsewhere. He is the natural, though spurious growth of 
Republics; and, like the courtier, he may, by his blandishments, delude 
the ears and blind the eyes of the people, to their own destruction. If 
ever th(?* day shall arrive, in which the best talents and the best virtues 
shall be driven from office by intrigue or corruption, by the ostracism of the 
press, or the still more unrelenting persecution of party legislation, the 
GOVERNMENT will cease to be national. It will be wise by accident, and 
bad by sytem." 

Montesquieu declares that \ 

'' The political liberty of the citizen is a tranquillity of mind, arising from 
the opinion each person has of his safety. The enjoyment of liberty, and 
even its support and preservation, consists in every man being allowed to 
speak his thoughts and lay open his sentiments." 

In a letter from that great statesman, Silas Wright, dated April 9, 
1847, he writes : 

*'No one familiar with the affairs of our Government can have failed to 
notice how largje a proportion of our statesmen appear never to have read 
the Constitution of the United States, with a careful reference to it>^ pre- 
cise language and exact procisions, but rather, as occasion presents, seem 
to exercise their ingenuity, unfortunately too often powerful and power- 
fully exerted to slretcn both to the line of what they at the moment con- 
sider EXPEDIENT." 

Said that enlightened statesman and scholar, John McPherson Berrien, 
of Georgia : 



10 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 

" A kiiowledi^e of tho Constitution, wliichis for the most part plain and 
simple in its provisions, would often enable the citizen to spurn indig- 
nantly the eftorts of demagogues to mislead him, and awaken hiui to a 
deeper sense of gratitude for the privileges which he is permitted to 
enjoy." 

On the 13th of February, 1847, George M. Dallas wrote these words : 

" It [the Constitution] should form the rudimental basis of American 
thought, by being made a perpetually recurring object of memory." 

I will conclude these quotations with one from the great expounder 
himself, though they might be continued almost indefinitely : on the 11th 
of December, 1850, Daniel \Vebster,_theu near the close of his useful life, 
thus wrote ; 

" The Constitution of the United States is a written instrument, a 
recoriied fundamental law ; it is the bond and the only bond of the Union 
of these States ; it is all that gives us a national character. Almost every 
man in the country is capable of reading it, and that which so deeply 
concerns all, should be made easily accessible to all." 

These are some of the recorded opinions of sages, statesmen, and phi- 
losophers, in relation to the Constitution of the United States — most of 
them Democrats. Now, let us look at the published opinions of the lead- 
ers of the abolitionized Republican party. Contrast is at least an artistic 
arrangement. 

Bear in mind, if ^ou please, that the Constitution must be accepted or 
rejected as a whole. It was so adopted, and not one line or syllable can 
be rejected without endangering the whole system of government, of 
which it is the life. 

The fourth article just as clearly recognizes the I'ight to hold pi'operty 
in slaves as the fifth article recognizes the right to alter and amend the 
instrument itself. One article is just as obligatory upon the people as 
another, and any person or persons who would endeavor to escape that 
obligation by setting up ** a higher law," a law of sentiment to be obeyed 
in preference to the Constitution, whenever its provisions conflict with 
their tender consciences, pi-ove themselves traitors to the Government of 
the United States. And this is the kind of treason that has produced 
this civil war, and deluged the land in fratricidal blood. 

I now deliberately charge the leaders of the so-called Republican, but 
really Ab<jlition party, with a premeditated conspiracy to destroy the 
Constitution of the United States, and per consequence, the American 
Union. Mark, I say, leaders of this party, for, as I have already 
remarked, the rank and file of one party are just as honest as those of 
the other, but deceived and betrayed. * 

Now, to the proof of this serious charge. In cases of capital crime cir- 
ouuihtantial evidence, where tho chain is unbroken, has been regarded by 
writers on criminal law as the safest kind of proof upon which to find a 
riglittious verdict. We have both circumstantial and positive evidence 
upon which to rest our case. 

Tlie nomination of Abraham Lincoln, at Chicago, was only one scene 



"to all whom it may oonckkx." 11 

in one act of this wicked iuul blondy dnima. Mniiv scciics ii;ivc Ihtii 
enacted since, hut like the phiy within tlie i>hiy, in the third net of Ham- 
let, there will, I apprehend, arise such an infernal coinniDtion anionf^ tlie 
audience that the conspirators will be driven in diseonifiture from the 
stage, appalled at the picture of their own diabolical murder. Said one 
of the high priests of their party, one who has received distinguished 
courtesies at the hands of the President while in Washington, and who 
was invited by a majority of the Senate to a seat on the floor of the Sen- 
ate Chamber; an honor rarely accorded, and only to those who have 
distinguished themselves in the service of their country, and to foreign 
Ambassadors — said Wendell Phillips : 

" The Constitution of our fathers was a mistake. Tear it to piecrs, and 
make a better- one. Don't say the machine is out of order ; it is in order; 
it does what its framers intended — pi-otect slavery. Our claim is Dis- 
union, breaking up of (he States! I have shown you that our work can- 
not be done under our institutions." 

'■'■This Union is a lie ! The American Union is an imposture, a covenant 
with death, and an agreement with hell. * * * lam for its overthrow."^ 

Said Lloyd Garrison : 

" Up with the flag of Disunion, that we may have a free and glorious 
Republic of our own ; and when the hour shall come, the hour will have 
arrived that shall witness the overthrow of slavery." 

Here is what Phillips said of the Republican party, when it was organ- 
ized as a sectional party, and it will be noticed how well and how truly 
he pictured it : 

" No man has a right to be surprised at this state of things. It is just 
what we [Abolitionists and Disuuionists] have attempted to bring about. 
It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country. It does not 
know its own face, and calls itself national — it is sectional. The Repub- 
lican party is a party of the North, pledged against the South." 

Gai-rison, in his Liberator, said still more explicitly : 

" The Republican party is moulding public sentiment in the right di- 
rection for the specific work the Aboliticmists are striving to accomplish, 
viz. : 7V;e dissolution of the Union, and the abolition of Slaver!/ throughout 
the land." 

All the while that the Abolitionists were talking thus boldly, the Repub- 
lican leaders pretended to the people that Garrison nnd Piiiilips did not 
represent their sentiments ; but let it be remembered tliat tiny expressed 
most substantially the same sentiments, yet in more vague ami uncertain 
language. Said Abraham Lincoln in his famous controversy with Judge 
Douglas : 

" / believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and 
half free." 

That is, that it cannot endure as Washington formed it, and as it ex- 
isted for seventy years. Mr. Garrison was of exactly the same opinion ; 
and, though Mr. Lincoln does not say all that Mr. Garrison doei, yet the 
person must be stupid who cannot see what Mr. Lincoln's real meaning 
is. And if any proof were needed of the identity of their principles, it 



12 "to all whom it may concekn." 

is to be found in the fact that ]Mr. Lincoln has at last openly come to 
Garrison's j)latforin. 

William H. Seward, in his celebrated Ohio speech, said : 

" It [slavery] can and must be abolished, and you and I must do it. * * 
Correct your own error, that slavenj has Conililutional guarantees which 
may not be released, and ought not to be relinquished. * * * You will 
soon bring the parties of the country into an effective aggression upon 
slavery." 

Mark tlie words, ^^ aggression upon slavery!'''' and also the denial of the 
plain Constitutional provision guaranteeing the right to hold slaves. 

N. P. Banks, now one of Mr. Lincoln's Major-Generals, said in a speech 
delivered in Maine, in 1855, and while Governor of Massachusetts : 

" Although I am not one of that class of men who cry for the preser- 
vation of the Union ; though I am willing, in a certain stale of circumstances, 
TO LKT IT SLIDE, I have uo fear for its perpetuation. But, let me 
say, if the chief object of the people of this country be to maintain and 
propagate chattel property in man — in other words, human slavery — this 
Union cannot and ought not to stand." 

Now, I would ask, in all candor, suppose a prominent Democrat had 
uttered those sentiments, would he not have been scouted by his party as 
one infected with political leprosy ? Did the Republican party so treat 
Governor Banks ? No, indeed ; but the very next session of Congress — 
the session of 1856 — they elected him Speaker of the national House of 
Eepresentatives ! 

Still later— in 1858 — in a speech in Massachusetts, we find Mr. Banks 
turning prophet, and predicting a ^'' military dictatorial Govermnenf^ in 
this country. lie had no faith in the stability of "j'Vee institutions.'^ 
He said: 

"1 can conceive of a time when this Constitution shall not be in exist- 
ence ; wlien we sliall have an absolute military dictatorial Govermnent, 
transmitted from age to age, with men at its head who ai-e made rulers by 
military commission, or who claim an hereditary right to govern those 
over whom they are placed." 

Senator Wade, of Ohio, at a mass meeting in Maine, the same at which 
Mr. Banks spoke, gave utterance to the following treasonable sentiments : 

" Tlie only salvation of the Union, is to be found in divesting it of all 
taint of human slavery. Or, let us sweep away this remnant which we 
call a Union. I go for a Union where all men are equal, or for NO Union 
at all ; and I go for right." 

And, as if to mark their approval of such doctrines, the Republicans 
of Ohio, the very next year, re-elected this disunionist to the Senate of 
the United States. His brother, Hon. Edwin Wade, has, for a number 
of years, occupied a seat in the House of Representatives, and we find 
him, in a speech delivered in the House, August 2, 1856, indorsing the 
treasonable doctrine of his Senatorial brother. We quote : 

" Sir, if the Constitution and the Union are to be used as instruments 
for propagating hunum bondage, tlu^y cannot be preserved — neither is it 
desirable that they should. The spirit which has taken possession of the 



"TO ALL WHOM IT MA.Y CONUKRN." 13 

slaveholders and their base tools, the Democracy of the free Staten, in 
the unclean thing of slavery propagandisrn ; and just as sure as animal 
life perishes in mephitic gases, so sure is it tliat the Constitution and 
Union must perish when smothered in the fond embraces of tlu'sv allies 
of human slavery." 

"Allies of human slavery !" — Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, 
Polk, &c. 

The Hon. Sidney Dean, of Connecticut, is in favor of dissolving the 
Union, unless freedom — that is, the freedom of the black ract — sliall bo 
inaugurated in this country. We quote from a sjjeech of his delivered in 
the House of Representatives, July 23, 18.56 : 

"The issue of all, the reason of all, the basis of all this lies in the sim- 
ple question, shall freedom or slavery be tlio ruling, pri'dominant feature 
of the model Republic of the world ? That question can be answered in 
one way. Freedom, human, personal freedom, the fulfilment of the great 
sentiment, 'that all men are created free and equal.' " 

Mark the lying interpolation. The words of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence are, " all men are created equal." The word free docs not 
occur, and yet it is constantly quoted by abolition speakers and writers, 
as the Honorable Mr. Dean has quoted it. This is one of the methods 
by which the people are cheated. He proceeds, 

" This will be the national ruling of this country for future centuries, or 
the sun of its past glory will set in drapery crimsoned in its own blood 
ere it reaches a century of its existence." 

Judge Rufus P. Spaulding, a delegate to the Republican Convention. 
in 1856, and also to the Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln, said in a 
speech made in the former Convention : 

" In case of the alternatives being presented, of the continuance of 
slavery or a dissolution of the Union, I am for dissolution, and I care 
NOT HOW QUICK IT COMES." 

There is no begging the question with Judge Spaulding ; he speaks 
the sentiments of his party in plain Saxon. 

Said the Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, in a speech delivered 
on the floor of the national House of Representatives: 

" I have only to add, under a full sense of my responsibility to my 
country and my God, I deliberately say, better disunion, better a 
SERVILE war, better any thing that God in His providence shall send, 
than an extension of the bonds of slavery." 

Charles Sumner, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations 
in the United States Senate, while advocating the ab,)litii)n of slavery iu 
a speech delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, November 2d, 1855, said : 

"God forbid, that for the sake of the Union, we should sacrifice the very 
thing for which the Union was made." 

Still later, on the 19th and 20th of May, 18.55, in a speech delivered in 
the Senate, Mr. Sumner held this revolutionary language : 

" Already has the muster begun. The strife is no longer local, but 
national. Even now while I speak portents hang on all the arches of the 



li " TO ALL WnOM IT MAY CONCERN.' 

horizon, threatening to darken the broad hand, which already yawns with- 
the mutterings q/" CIVIL war." 

Mr. Sumner, perfectly understanding the dark secrets of his party, 
heard, even in 1855, " the mutterings of our present deph)rable civil war !" 
William H. Seward, in his speech in the Senate, April 9, 1856, said : 

"He who found a river in his path, and sat down to wait for the flood 
to pass away, was not more unwise than he who expects the agitatiop of 
slavery to cease while the love of freedom animates the bosoms of man- 
kind." 

And then, after showing that this agitation will lead to war between 
the North and the South, Mr. Seward suggests to the Pacific States that 
then would be their time to withdraw from the Union. He continues : 

" Then the free States and the slave States of the Atlantic, divided and 
warring with each other, would disgust the free States of the Pacific, and 
they would have abundant cause and justification for withdrawing from 
A Uxiox productive no longer of peace, safety, and liberty to themselves, 
and no longer holding up the cherished hopes of mankind." 

This is South Carolina doctrine. 

Again, in his speech at Albany, October 12, 1855, Mr. Seward said : 

" Slavery is not, and never can be, perpetual. It will be overthrown 
either peacefully and lawfully under this Constitution, or it will work the 
subversion of the Constitution, together with its own overthrow. Then 
the SLAVEHOLDERS WOULD PERISH IN THE STRUGGLE." 

Again, in his speech in the Senate, March 11, 1850, Mr. Seward threat- 
ens the South with "civil war" unless they emancipate their slaves. He 
says : 

"When this answer shall be given it will appear that the question of 
dissolving the Union is a complex question that embraces the fearful 
issue whether the Union shall stand and slavery under the steady, peace- 
ful action of moral, social, and political causes, bo removed by gi-adual 
voluntary effort, and with compensation, or whether the UNION shall be 
Di.ssf>LVED, civil war ensue, bringing on violent but conqylete and imme- 
diate emancipation. We are now arrived at that stage when that crisis 
can be foreseen — when we must foresee it. It is directly before us. Its 
shadow is upon us." 

In plain words, Mr. Seward says to the South : You can have union 
and the gradual emancipation of slavery, or you shall have disunion, civil 
war, and inuiunliate emancipation ! This, in plain P'nglish, was his 
proposition. 

The Hon. Francis E. Spinner, Register of the Treasury Department 
under Mr. Chase, said, in a speech delivered in 1856, alluding to the 
possilde failui-e of the Republicans in the effort to elect Fremont : 

" Tlie free North would be left to the choice of peaceful DISSOLUTION 
OP THE Union, a civil war, which would end in the same, or an uncon- 
ditional surrender of every principh* held dear by freemen." 

That most charitable, meek, and liberal-minded apostle of Abolitionism, 
Henry Ward IJeecher, said in 1856, in a speech at New Haven, Ct., whore 
he proclaimed that "a Sharp's rifle waa a truly moral agency:" 



"to all whom it may concern." 15 

"If this poacoful remedy [the biiHot-hox] shoiikl fail to he apjilicd thin 
year, then the people will count the cost wisely, and decide for them- 
selves, boldly and firmly, which is the better way, to RISE IN ARMS ANJ> 
THROW OFF A GOVERNMENT worsc than tlidl. of old King George, or en- 
dure it another four years, and then vote again." 

In the same speech, Mr. Beechor thus denounced the Constitution of 
the United States : 

" The Constitution is the cause of every divisicm which this vexed nues- 
tion of slavei-y has ever occasioned in this country. It has been the foun- 
tain and father of our troubles, by attempting to hold together, as recon- 
ciled, two opposing principles, which will not harmonize nor agree. The 
only hope of the slave is, over the ruins of the Govemmenl and of the 
American Church. The dissolution of the Union is the abolition of slavery." 

James Watsnn Webb, Mr. Lincoln's minister to Brazil, was a delegate 
to the Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln, and also the Convention 
that nominated Fremont. In his speech, in that Convention, he gave 
utterance to the following words, which were received with tumultuous 
cheering and cries of " good :" 

" They [the slaveholders] tell you they are willing to abide by the ballot- 
box, and are willing to make that last appeal. If we fail there, what tlieii ? 
We will drive it back, sword in hand ; and, so help me God, believing 
that to be right, I am with them. [Loud cheers and cries of "Good!"] 
Northern gentleman, on your action depends the result. You may, with 
God's blessing, present to this country a name, rallying around it all the 
elements of the Opposition, and thus we will become so strong that, 
through the ballot-box, we will save the country. But if a name be pre- 
sented on which we may not rally, and the consequence is civil war — 
nothing more, nothing less, but civil war — I ask, then, what is our iirst 
duty?" 

In the same Convention, the Hon. Erastus Hopkins used these words; 

" If peaceful means fail us, and we are driven to the last extremity, 
when ballots are useless, then we will make bullets effective." 

The Hon. John P. Hale, United States Senator from New Hampshire, 
was also a delegate to the Convention, and addresscid it at length. He 
congratulated the Convention upon the spirit of unanimity with which 
it had done its work. He said : 

" I believe that this is not so much a Convention to change the Admin- 
istration of the Government, as to say whether there shall be any Gov- 
ernment to be administered. • You have assembled not to say whether 
this Union shall be preserved, but to say whether it shall be a blessing 
or a scorn and hissing among nations." 

On the 31st of May, 1848, he said: " Let the consequences be what 
they may, 1 am willing to place myself upon the principle of human right; 
to stand where the word of God and my own con.science concur in placing 
me, and there bid defiance to all consequences. And in the end, if this 
Union, bound as it is to associations, has no other principle of cement 
than the blood of human slavery, let it sunder.'''' 

Again, on the 12th of July, he said : 

" All the horrors of dissolution I can look steadfastly in the face, before 
I could look to that moral ruin which must fall upon us when we have so 



16 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 

far prostituted ourselves as to become the pioneers of slavery in the Ter- 
ritories." 

In the Senate on the 2Gth February, 1856. he said: " I thank Ood that 
the indications of the pi-csent day seem to promise that the North have at 
la.st got to the wall, and will go no farther. I hope so. The Senator says 
there may be a power that shall say ' Thus far shalt thou go. and no far- 
ther.' [Good! good !] Sir. I hope it will come, and if it comes to blood, 
let blood come. No, sir, if that issue must come, let it come, and it can- 
not come too soon. Sir, Puritan blood has not always shrunk from even 
those encounters ; and when the war has been pi'oclaimed with the knife, 
and the knife to the hilt, the steel has sometimes glistened in their hands; 
and when the battle was over, they were not always second best." 

Carl Schurz, appointed by Mr. Lincoln minister to Spain, was a dele- 
gate to the Chicago Convention, and took a very active part in securing 
the nomination of Mr. Lincoln. Hear him, in 1860, in a speech at St. 
Louis : 

"May the God in human nature be aroused and pierce the very soul of 
our nation with an energy that shall sweep as with the besom of "destruc- 
tion this abomination from the land. You call this revolution. It is. In 
this we need revolution ; we will have it ! Let it come!" 

Horace Greeley, to whom Mr. Lincoln is indebted for his nomination at 
Chicago, has always boldly advocated disunion : 

" If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out 
of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right 
to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists, nevertheless. * * * 
"We mu.st ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and 
nullify or destroy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite 
anotlier matter. Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall 
deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures de- 
signed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one 
section is pinned to another by bayonets." — Tribune of November 9, 
1860. 

'• If the Cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peace- 
fully from the Union, we think they should be allowed to do so. Any 
attempt to compel them by force to remain, would be contrary to the 
principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, con- 
trary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based." — Tri- 
bune, November 26. 1860. 

"If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from 
the IJritish empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why 
it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the 
Union in 1861." — Tribune, December 17, 1860. 

" Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the Southern people 
have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape 
from it, we will do our best to forward their views." — Tribune, February 
23, 1862. 

Tliaddeus Stevens, the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means 
in the last Congress, and the acknowledged leader of the Republican 
party, said recently, in a si)eech at Lancaster : 

" If I believed that the object of this war was to restore the Union as 
it was, including slavery, I would be against the war." 

Mr. M. E. Conway, a Republican member of Congress from Kansas, 



"to all whom it may conckrn." 17 

in a fit of disgust at the "fast and loose" game of (Jerrit Smitli and others, 
concludes a letter to Mr. Greeley in these wttrds : 

•'As to the Union, I would not give a cent for it. unh-ss it stood as a 
guarantee for freedom to every man, woman, and child within its entire 
jurisdiction. I consider the idea that every thing must he sacrificed to 
the Union utterly preposterous. Wliat was the Union mad(^ for ? Tiiat 
we should sacrifice ourselves to it ? I, for one, would beg to hi^ excused. 
As things stand I would sacrifice the Union to Freedom any morning he- 
fore breakfast." 

Ex-Governor Johnston is in favor of " trampling upon the Constitu- 
tion" if it stands in the way of "preserving!" — (Heaven save the mark !) 
— " the nation !" 

These remarks of Governor Johnston were applauded at the Chestnut 
street League in Philadelphia. 

The atrocious Alfred N. Gilbert, addressing the Philadelphia Union 
League, said he "would see every woman and child in the South perish," 
rather than that the Abolition party should fail in itsobjects. 

Abraham Lincoln, when a member of Congress, in a speech delivered 
on the floor of the House, January 12th, 184S, boldly and emphatically 
advocated the doctrine of secession. He said: 

" Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power have a 
right to rise up and, shake off the existing government, and form a new 
one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, 
a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this 
right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing gov- 
ernment may choose to exercise it. ^wy portion of such people that 
can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as. 
they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people 
may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near 
about them, who may oppose their movements. It is a quality of revo- 
lution not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and to make 
new ones." 

This speech will be found recorded in the Congressional rtiports of that 
session. 

So much for a portion only of what has been said and written. These 
quotations might be continued almost without limit. Now, what has been 
done ? 

And here it is proper to observe that the Republican party was t)rgan- 
ized, not as a national, but as a sectional or geographical party. The 
first meeting called for the purpose of its organization, was held on 
the 26th of September, 1854, at Auburn, New York, the home of William 
H. Seward. The object, as stated, was to "organize a Republican party, 
which should represent the friends of freedom." On that occasion Gen- 
eral Bruce said : " They would raise a thunder that would shake Southern 
Slavery to its very centre.'" In proof that its organization was purely 
sectional, the following resolution, oflfered by General Granger, was 
adopted : 

" Resolved, That we recommend that a Convention of delegates from 
the Free States, equal in number to their representatives in Congress, re- 

2 



18 "to all whom it may concern." 

spoctivoly, be lielil at the citj^ of Syracuse, on tlie 4th of July, 1856, to 
nominate candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the 
United States, for the next Presidential election." 

The resolution was adopted with " treinendous cheering." Dr. Snod- 
grass moved to call this the Republican party. The Convention then 
adjourned sine die. The place of meeting of the proposed Convention 
was afterwards changed from Syracuse to Philadel^jhia, where, in pursu- 
ance of the foregoing resolution, they met and nominated Fremont. 

In 1800, the delegates met at Chicago, and nominated Lincoln. During 
the proceedings of that Convention, Judge Jessup rose and said : 

That he desired to amend a verbal mistake in the name of the party, 
It was printed in the resolutions " National Republican party." He 
wished to strike out the word National, as that was not the name by 
which the party was properly known. 

The correction was made. Thus originated the sectional party now in 
power, against which the NATIONAL Democratic party is contending. 

The limits of this address will not suffice to notice one-tenth part of the 
acts of these conspirators against our national Constitution, which, if all 
grouped together, would form a picture of political and moral depravity 
appalling in its hideousness. 

I must be content to select some of the more prominent and glaring. 

I pass over the infamous " personal liberty laws," adopted by Repub- 
lican Legislatures, designed to render nugatory the fourth clause of the 
second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. 

I pass by the " Emigrant Aid Societies," the " John Brown raid," and 
the circiihition of the atrocious " Helper book," with its indorsement by 
sixty-eight Republican Senators and members. And here let it be observed, 
that it is perfectly consistent with the philosophy of the human mind, 
that it may be gradually moulded and prepared by plausible arts and skill, 
playing upon the passions and prejudices, and even upon the purest and 
nobUsst impulses of the heart, until a species of moral insanity seizes 
upon and drags its victim down to irretrievable ruin. 

And tliis is the unfortuu'ite condition to which a large portion of the 
honest yeomanry of our country have been reduced by the infernal sorcery 
of the liouds of Abolitionism. With phiusible sophistry they have 
poisoned the delicate, sensitive, and impressionable mind of a large por- 
tion of the mothers and daughters, and through their influence, the male 
youtli of our land ; holding up to distempered fancy, highly colored pic- 
tures of a false philanthropy, until at length the glorious institutions of 
our Fathers have become subordinate to the dangerous sentimentalism of 
a" high. M- law" doctrine, promulgated as a political dogma by him who 
sits as prime minister at the right hand of Abraham the First. No free 
people ever lost their liberties by sudden assault. 

The citadel of American liberty, especially, could not have been 
Btormed without overwhelming discomfiture to the assailants. The 
attempt has been made to take it by siege, by gradual approaches, by 
" parallcl.s," to use a now familiar military term. Declarations and proc- 
lainaliwiis are issued, and acts performed to-day that could not have been 



"to all whom it MAV CONCKRX." 19 

declared or performed six inoiitlis aj^o. Tilings were said and done six 
months ago that could not have l)een said or done six inontlis i)revionsIy, 
and so on to the beginning of the chapter, wlien Mr. Ijincoln delivered 
his inaugural, declaring that he had " no constitutional right" to molest 
or interfere with any of the local institutions of th(^ rebellious States, and 
when, in December, 1861, Mr. Seward addressed his famous circular let- 
ter to our ambassadors at the several courts of Europe, explicitly and 
emphatically declaring the same cardinal truth. 

The worst passions of the human heart, disguised under the iiiantlcs of 
charity, philanthropes and expediency, have been employi'd witii (i,iabol- 
ical skill and success, to steal away th(> precious birthright of AuuTican 
liberty. 

If Satan were only permitted to wage his warfare against our fallen race 
in all the hideousuess, whci-ein he is represented to appear in the regions 
of Pandemonium, there would be no need of warning the people against 
him ; all men would flee in terror at his approach ; but, for some inscruta- 
ble purpose, he is permitted to assume many bright and alluring forms. 
Perhaps there is no garment in all his extensive sulphurous, wardrobe, 
which he wears with greater success in his infernal mission, than tlie drab 
cloak of canting hypocritical philanthi-opy. 

The horrible condition of our country to-day, is thi> result, or luitural 
sequence, of the Puritanical meddlesomeness and selfishness of the witch- 
burning semi-infidel portion of the New England population. There are, 
it is true,. some large-hearted, noble i>eople in New England; those who, 
to-day, stand up in their manhood, vainly, and almost hopelessly, strug- 
gling against a flood of fanaticism : men, for instance, like the venerable 
Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, and Winthrop, of Massachusetts, especially 
merit the eulogy and sympathy of every champion of the Constitution. 

New England traded in negroes — in the Convention that framed the 
Constitution, she voted to extend the slave-trade twenty years, viz., until 
1808 — brought them in ships from their native Africa, worked them ou 
her land, until its impoverished soil rendered it no longer profitable; 
and then, having made a '• smart" bargain (you may rely upon that), sold 
them to her Southern neighbors, whom she has never ceased to envy, in 
the wealth which the rich Southern soil has enabled them to derive from 
this species of labor. 

By amazing shrewdness and tact in political manoeuvring. New Eng- 
land, by means of her tariff, has always largely profiti'd from the labor of 
the slaves, while free from the expense or trouble of supporting them ; 
but her inordinate avarice and greed of wealth, has always induced a 
covetous hankering for the possession of that fair domain, whose princely 
harvests have supplied nearly four-fifths of the vast exportations of our 
magnificent commerce. And if she could only get possession of those 
rich cotton and rice plantations of Georgia and South Carolina, having 
first confiscatt'd the soil and exterminated the own<u-s; and could fill her 
coffers with pelf, by retaining all the negroes in a condition of bondage, 
it would be found before a great while, that one-half the population of 
Massachusetts, Vermont, and the other New England States, would be 



2U "to all whom it may concern/ 

engaged in raising cotton and rico, \>y the use of slave labor (tlie only 
kind of labor, indeed, by which those staples can profitably be raised). 
The only ditfereuce would be, that for every bale of cotton which the 
moderately worked negro now produces, his sweat, yea, and blood, too, 
would be taxed to produce three. 

Heaven help the poor uegro, if he should ever change his present for 
New England masters I Tlieu would he know the bitterness of slavery ! 

In this connection, it is worthy of remark, that in those States where 
Abolitionism is most rampant, are found the smallest number of free 
uegroes. . 

1 have shown that the I'resident, wheu a member of Congress, advo- 
cated Secession, or revolutionary doctrine ; that all, or most of the leaders 
of the Kepublicaa party, advocated violent revolutionary doctrines ; that 
Mr. Seward, promulgated as a political dogma, that there was a law- 
higher than the Constitution of the United States, to which the funda- 
mental law of the laud was declared to be subordinate ; that there was an 
'* irrepressible coutiict" between the slave labor of the South and the free 
Iab<-)r of the North, in the face of the fact, that the country had advanced 
from infancy to colossal maturity, under these two systems of labor; 
showing that, so far from there being a conflict, the two systems have 
worked together in beautiful harmony ; the producing slave labor of the 
South, and the manufacturing and conunercial enterprise of the North, 
operating harmoniously ; a system, in which there was no jar, until the dis- 
cordant element of New England fanaticism, got the machinery into disor- 
der. The Abolition Chicago Convention, was only a new act in the drama. 
The most radical abolitionists in the Convention — those who had preached 
the strongest disunion doctrines — were the most urgent advocates of Mr. 
Liiucoln's nomination, overxMr. Seward and all other candidates. Horace 
(ireeley was particularly active in securing his nomination. Seward was 
uot trusted by Greeby, i'hillips, Lovejoy, and the radicals of their com- 
plexion. They apprehended^ that after using the " Amei-icau citizens of 
African descent," until he (Seward) should be safely seated in the Pi'esi- 
titutial chair, he would abandon the uegro and " Tylerize" their party ; 
hence, they would not trust him. The programme had, doubtless, been 
arranged: Seward was to be used until the eleventh hour, to preach his 
" iirepressible" philosophy, and then to be thrown overboard. The man 
who hiid declared tliat •• me government could not permanently exist half 
slave and half tree," was to be their standard-bearer, and so Abraham 
Lincoln was uominated. 

i pass over the scenes of the Presidential canvass, the deplorable 
division and wasting of the strength of the Democratic party ; pass over 
those days, wheu every Democratic heart was sad at the prospect of 
triumph, for tho first lime in our histoi-y, of a purely sectional party ; 
well remembering the warning voice of Washington in his Farewell Ad- 
dles.-, and the warnings of ail the great Statesmen, as well in the later, as 
in the early periods of tlie Republic, all of whom seemed to believe that 
this was ttie only strain which the Union was not strong enough to bear. 
1 pass over those ribald jests and taunts of tho Republicans, who, when 



"to all whom it may conckrx." 21 

Democratic voices were raised in earnest romonstraiico, supplication, and 
warnino^, against the election of a president committeil to a sectional i)lat- 
forni, called tluMn in derision, "Union-savers," " Union-shrickers," and 
other opprobrious epithets, as now the same men call Democrats, " Cop- 
perheads," and "traitors," in their spite: becauee what was then predict- 
ed, has been verified by the ghastly logic of events, and because the same 
warning voice that was disregarded then, is again raised, in pleading ac- 
cents for the preservation of all that remains of the dearest rights of 
American freemen. 

As the Democracy truly predicted in 1860, so now the same patriotic 
voice is heard, crying aloud, " to all whom it may concern," proclaiming 
to their misguided countrymen, that, dreadful as are the present evils, 
they are small in comparison with the calamities that are in store for the 
people, if the present Administration, with its ruinous policy of c nduct- 
ing the war for conquest, subjugation, confiscation, and emancipation, 
instead of for the preservation of the Union under the Constitution of 
our fathers, shall be cojitinued during the ensuing four years. 

Passing all these scenes, I beg leave to remind you of the condition of 
the country between the period of Mr. Lincoln's election and his inau- 
guration ; State after State, deliberately holding conventions and pass- 
ing ordinances of secession — assigning as a reason therefor, that the 
incoming Administration was committed to an invasion of their Constitu- 
tional rights ; the people everywhere throughout the Northei-n and 
Border States in a condition of wild excitement and alarm ; while there, 
at Springfield, sat the President elect, one line of assurance from whose 
pen at that juncture might have been potential in averting the horrors that 
have ensued ; and although he was adjured to write but a single line, and 
innumerable letters were addressed to him from every quarter, imploring 
him to speak or write but a word, his ear remained deaf to every ai>peal. 
His voice was silent, while the gallant ship, freighted with the dearest 
earthly hopes of humanity, was struggling in the trough ot" a tempestuous 
sea of passion. He who had been clothed with a moral power for good 
or for evil, such as but few in history have ever possessed, chose the evil, 
and refused to utter one syllable of assurance, by which tlie frenzied pas- 
sions of the hour might have been calmed, and the awful burden of grief 
and anxiety lifted from the oppressed and bleeding heart of the Nation. 

No, fellow-countrymen, this was not in the programme ! Will it be said, 
in explanation of this inexplicable silence, that to have spoken or written 
would have done no good ? I ask, could it by any possibility have done 
harm ? When men are honestly anxious to avert a calamity, do they not 
speak and act ? When your child is sick, does not your anxiety to have 
his malady cured induce you to act promptly — to try every remedy which 
is placed within reach ? or do you sit down idly, and crack unseemly 
jokes? He who would thus act, even in the case of an individual, would 
be justly execrated as a monster of depravity. What then must be 
thought of one who would so conduct himself when the national life was 
threatened — his country trembling and writhing in the throes of dis- 
solution ! 



32 "to ALT, WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 

History records that Nero, the monster of antiquity, fiddled while IJoin. 
was burning. The President will be fortunate if the impartial pen of 
history shall fail to record that Lincoln jested while his country was 
dijing ! 

At length the President leaves Springfield, to travel towards the Capi- 
tal. In his journey thence, did he manifest that gravity of deportment 
wiiich might reasonably have been expected, under the circumstances, 
would have marked the conduct of him who had been chosen to occupy 
the chair of Washington ? No; he talked flippantly about an "artificial 
crisis;" he talked about "his whiskers;" he indulged in humorous jests 
about " nobody being hurt;" and finally, capped the climax of folly in 
the memorable night journey from Harrisburg to the national Capital, 
disguised in the costume of a tartan cap, and enveloped in the ample 
folds of a long military cloak. 

Having reached the Capital in safety, we find, in the character of the 
inaugural ceremonies, the natural fruit of those revolutionary doctrines 
which himself and his wily associates had taught for so many years. 
The cup of American humiliation was filled when a President of the 
tJnited States was inaugurated under the protection of drawn sabres and 
glistening bayonets. 

"Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen ! Then you and I, and all 
of us fell down, while bloody treason flourished over us." 

And still I might continue, in the language of the immortal bard (only 
pai-aphrasing a Httle) : 

" Ah, now you weep, and I perceive you feel the dint of pity — good 
friends — kind friends — let me not stir your hearts and minds to any sud- 
den flood of mutiny; they that have done this deed are honorable. What 
private griefs they have, alas, 1 know not. that made them do it ! They 
are wise and honorable, and will, no doubt, with reason answer you. I 
come not, friends, to steal away your hearts I I am no orator, as Everett 
is. But as you know nu> all, a plain, blunt man, that love my country — • 
and that they know full well that gave me public leave to speak of it! 
For I have neither wit. nor words, nor uorth ; action, nor utterance, nor 
power of speech, to stir men's blood — I only speak right on. I tell you that 
which you yourselves do know; show you my country's wounds, poor, 
poor dumb mouths, and bid them spi ak for me. But, were I Kverctt, 
and Everett I, there were one would ruffle up your spirits, and put a 
tongue in every wound of my country, that should move the stones of 
America to rise and mutiny." 

The inaugural ceremonies over, the inaugural oath subscribed before 
high Heaven and the sovereign people, that he, Abraham Lincoln, would 
'^' preserve, protect, and defend''' the Constitution of the United States, 
—what followed ? 

'i'wo long months of time — each hour pregnant with the interests of 
Centuries — wasted and frittered away in a degrading scramble for those 
places of profit, for which, many had then, and have since, bartered their 
inestimable birthright. 

During the period intervening between the election and the inaugura- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln, James Buchanan, who, from long experience in the 



"to all whom it may concern." 2 3 

councils of the country, having a perfect uiidorstaiiding of tlio tlu-ory a"<l 
character of our federative structure of Government; and knowing full 
well that civil war, once, commenced, would result in consequences too 
deplorable to be contemplated, endeavored by every means within hi;* 
power to avert the dreadful catastrophe of armed collision. 

And here I desire to record, that while all my political life — as is wM 
known — I openly opposed Mr. Buchanan's presidential aspirations (being 
favorable to another) ; opposed him at Baltimore, in the contest with 
General Cass; went to Cincinnati, and opposed his nomination there i 
yes, opposed him in the days of his power and influence, when many who 
now, with base ingratitude, when the sceptre of political power has de- 
parted, misrepresent and revile him, crooked the prc^gnant hinges of the 
knee, that thrift might follow fawning ; now, when the silver crown of ac- 
cumulated years admonishes him of the hour when the Judge of all the 
earth shall pronounce whether he kept his oath to ^* preserve, protect, and 
defend" the Constitution of his country, or broke it on the i)lea of expe- 
diency ; now, when hypoci'ites, and knaves, and thoughtless men, 
blinded by partisan prejudice, vpvile, and slander, and would crucify 
him if they could, I take pleasure in thus publicly repelling these 
baseless accusations ; and, pointing to his message to Congress, of 
December, 1860, and then pointing to a desolate, broken, and dis- 
tracted country, declare that history will vindicate the principles asserted 
in that message, to wit: that the Government of the United .States de- 
pends for its perpetuity upon the virtue of the people, and the perfect 
good faith of the separate States, in maintaining, with scrupulous fidelity. 
in letter and spirit, the Federal Constitution ; that war between the States 
would be disunion, and perhaps centralization and despotism. 

During that winter, the Democratic Senators and members struggled 
hard against the tide of Abolition fanaticism. Various projects of com- 
promise were introduced, and rejected by the Republicans, one of which, 
that suggested by Senator Bigler, I always regarded as, more than any 
other, consistent with our Republican form of Government, viz. : To refer 
the whole question to a vote of the sovereign people. This, like the 
others, was rejected. Finally, the famous compromise resolutions of the 
patriot Crittenden — the life-lo,ng friend of Henry Clay — were intro- 
duced. The Southern members agreed to accept Mr. Critteudi'n's propo- 
sition as a settlement of the difficulty, provided the resolutions were pre- 
sented or indorsed by the Republican members. They (the Southera 
members) said, that the excitement and alarm existing in the Southern 
States, was created by the belief tiiat the Republican party had resolved 
on an aggressive warfare against their Constitutional guarantees ; and in 
justification of this apprehension, they pointed to the incontrovertible 
fact, that a war hud been semi-officially inaugurated by sixty-eight Repub- 
lican Senators and members, endorsing and circulating, under the privilege 
of their frank, the notorious " Helper Book." They pointed to the John 
Brown raid into Virginia, at Harper's Ferry, and to the fact that that old 
cut-throat and horse-thief had been canonized as a hero and martyr, un- 
rebuked by any portion of the Republican party. Tbey pointed to the 



24 " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN." 

"personal liberty bills," which disgraced the statutes of every State 
where the Republican pai-ty was di)minant. They pointed to the incen- 
diary sentiments uttered by the leaders of that party, both in and out of 
Congress. All this, and more, they cited, to show that the alarm in the 
Southern States was not unreasonable, but perfectly natural. Now, said 
they, you Republican gentlemen can disabuse the minds of our constitu- 
ents, if they are unreasonably alarmed, by voting for these resolutions of 
Mr. Crittenden, and this whole difficulty may be amicably adjusted ; but 
if these measures are simply voted for by Democrats, (a two-third vote 
was necessary to pass the resolutions), the question will not have been 
changed, but remain precisely as before the vote, and no good will have 
been effected. 

Now, here was the question of peace or war suspended, as it were, by a 
thread — the dearest interests of mankind dependent on a ballot. On one 
side, peace, prosperity, national power, and constitutional liberty — as 
Washington and our fathers interpreted the name of liberty — on the 
Other side, war! civil war ! with all its accumulating horrors ; " States 
dissevei-ed, di<ci>rdant, belligerent," demoniac hate, bi'others slain by 
brothers, desolated fields and burning cities, the widow's anguish, the 
orphan's plaintive wail, the hissing scorn of freedom's votaries in every 
land, the imprecations coming up from generations of America yet in the 
womb of time ; and, above all, and beyond all, the I)lasting curse of an 
offended God, who, when He had taken upon Himself the nature of man, 
said : " Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called the chil- 
dren of God." In view of this choice between the good and the evil, be- 
tween blessings and curses, how did the Republican members of Congress 
vote on these resolutions of the Kentucky Statesman ? Against them to a 
man ! And raised the bloody banner of fratricidal war ! 

Merciful Heaven ! was hell un^iarred and the demons of perdition per- 
mitted at that critical moment to visit our earth, to conjure with devilish 
incantation those men in the Senate-house clothed with power and re- 
sponsibility so vast ? 

How else shall we account for this "most foul and unnatural" conduct? 
Can we, by applying the ordinary rules of interpretation, account satis- 
factorily for the rejection by the Republicans in Congress of those peace 
resolutions? We cannot. It was not in the programme ! Other efforts 
were made by the Democrats. The Peace Congress was convened, and 
adjourned with the same result. So fearful were the Abolitionists that 
measures might be adopted in that Convention wliioli would destroy their 
infernal plot, that letters were written by Senators and members to 
the Republican Governors of the vai-ious States, urging the appointment 
of men as delegates to the Conventicm who could be relied upon to oppose 
all compromise. Here is a specimen of these prcK-ious epistles, written 
by United States Senator Chandler, of Michigan, to the Governor of that 
State :— 

•' To His Exrellency, Justin Blair: 

*• Governor Hingham and myself telegraphed you on Saturday, at the 
request of Massachusetts and New York, to send di^legates to the Peace 



"TO ALL WHOM IT MAY OONCKRN. 2o 

or Comproiniso Congress. Tlioy admit tliat wp wcro right and that they 
wero wrong, that no Ropuhlican Stato should have sent didi-gatcs. hut 
they are here and cannot get away. Oliio, In<liiiMa. and Khode Island 
are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois, and now tliey heg us fur 
God's sake to come to their rescue, and sav(^ the Repuhlican ])arty from 
rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none. The whole 
thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice and will end in 
thin smoke. Still I hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring 
brethren that you will send the delegates. 

*' Truly, your friend, 

"Z. CHAXDLEU. 

"P. S. — Some of the manufacturing States think that a fiijiit would ho 
awful. Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estima- 
tion, be worth a rush. 

"Washington, February 11, 1861." 

Pennsylvania's most exemphiry Executive (?) Andrew G. Curtin, sent to 
that Peace Congress delegates who he well knew would vote against all 
compromise. Why did he select David Wilmot as a delegate to that 
convention ? Did he, like Senator Chandler, feel greater solicitude 
to save the "Republican party" than to save the Union? Did 
he also think that a little " blood-letting" would be good for the 
country ? I charge upon Governor Curtin, that by sending Judge 
Wilmot to that convention, he made himself quite as responsible for 
his share in pi-eventing the adoption of all propositions of compromise 
and peace wiiich were there persistently voted down, as if he had been 
present, and had spoken and voted as Judge Wilmot spoke and voted. 

It is impossible to crowd into the limits necessary to be observed 
all the evidence of this most atrocious plot that, like the spectres 
in King Richard's slumber, pass in rapid review before the mental vision. 

Referring again to the period after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, while 
the patriots were all engaged in saving as much of the country as would 
hold the spoils they were industriously appoi-tioning. Commissioners from 
South Carolina arrived in Washington, and while these men were being 
hoodwinked by Mr. Seward promising them that the status at Fort Sum- 
ter should not be disturbed, and the Commissioners, on their part, prom- 
ising that the gallant Major Anderson and his little band of heroes in 
Foi-t Sumter should have every thing in the way of provisions supplied 
them, until some satisfactory arrangement could, perhaps, be agreed 
upon, the Administration were engaged in secretly fitting out an expe- 
dition in the harbor of New York to provision and garrison the fort, know- 
ing full well that, under the circumstances, these vessels, or the fort 
itself, would be fired upon. They calculated rightly. An overt act of 
war was perpetrated; our glorious Star-spangled Banner desecrated, the 
heart of the Northern masses fired, "the Republican party saved," and 
the Union, it may be, lost! 

The events of that culminating period will form a dark chapter in 
the history of this bloody drama. It will be recollected that in the lat- 
ter part of May or first of June, 1861, the telegraph offices in the princi- 
pal cities were taken possession of by the Governraeat authorities, and 



2G " TO ALL WHOM IT MAY C0NCI:RN." 

among tlio copies of telegrams seized were those of a certain James E. 
Hurve}', who had been appointed minister to Portugal. These telegrams 
revealed the fact that Mr. Harvey had been in correspondence with the 
Rebels at (Charleston, South Carolina, and had communicated to them the 
fact that a fleet of vessels was fitting out in the harbor of New York, de- 
signed to provision the garrison at Fort Sumter. This information caused 
the Kebel authorities to determine to fire upon Fort Sumter, when the 
said fleet should appear off the Charleston bar. On the 7th of June, the 
New York Tribune, and the Press generally, violently assailed Mr. Harvey 
for having betrayed the secrets of the Administration in giving this infor- 
mation to the Rebels. When thes-e newspaper articles reached Mr. Har- 
vey at Lisbon, he wrote a "Card," dated Lisbon, July 7, 1861, which was 
published in the Philadelphia " North American,'' on the 27th of that 
month, wherein he exonerates himself by declaring that all of the aforesaid 
correspondence was by authority of the President and Cabinet, In his 
card he says : 

"While holding an official position I am precluded from making decla- 
rations which would at once give a satisfactory answer to these slanders." 
" I do not choose to utter a word at this time, which would in any manner 
impair the action of the Government, or subject others to harsh and un- 
just comment, when I know that their motives, like my own, were the 
purest and best." 

'' The fact is, the Government was in possession of every tittle of the 
evidence which had accumulated in Washington long before the public 
seizure was ordered ; several weeks before 1 left there, and before 1 had 
received or accepted any commission. If there was any thing to know it 
was known fully and entirely, as Avill be shown whenever necessary. I 
assert th'^ fact distinctly, without condition or reservation. I submitted 
to their inspection every line received b}^ telegraph, and never held any 
other correspondence but that, direct or indirect." 

Did Mr. Harvey state the case truly ? If he did not, why has he been 
retained in his important mission from that day till this ? 

]f he did, what object had the Administration in revealing the fact 
of this preparation to provision the fort ? Was it that an overt act of 
rebellion might be committed, " the Northern heart fired," and, in the 
language of Senator Chandler, in his letter to Governor Blair, " the Re- 
publican party saved from rupture ?" or did Mr. Seward believe it to be 
his duty, as he subsequently avowed, to take care " that the war should be 
begun by the enemies of the Union ?" 

Well, Sumter was fired upon, the Northern heart 'was fired, and then 
came the call for seventy-five thousand troops, and then came from the 
mountains and the valleys, from the rostrum and the anvil, from the mer- 
chant's desk and the laborer's ditch, from the gilded saloons of luxury 
and the rugged cot of penury, from Democrats and Republicans — one 
grand, spontaneous shout, " The Union ! it must and shall be preserved!" 

Then came " Bull Run ;" then the resolutions by Congress, declar- 
ing the war to be " for the preservation of the Constitution and the resto- 
ration of the Union, with all the rights and dignity of the several States 
unimpaired," and that when " these objects" should be " attained the war 



"to all whom it may conceun." 27 

ouj^lil io cease," passed unanimously except tw(t votes, one a Xnrtlicru 
Abolilionists, the other a Southern Secessionist. In the extremity of 
alarmcaused by the Bull Run rout, the Republicans voted with the De- 
mocrats for these resolutions. 

Under the belief that this was the real purpose of the Administration, a 
vast army of volunteers was obtained, and when the Administration found 
itself secure behind an impregnable wall of bayonets, the prosecution of 
the programme was resumed. 

This naiTative having been thus extended, it is out of the question to 
follow step Ijy step the insidious approaches upon the citadel of liberty, 
over a violated Constitution, under the hypocritical mask of pretending 
to defend it. Under the plausible cant, "the Union," "the flag," "the 
Constitution," and "the unconditional support of the Government," 
appeals so potent as to reach every patriotic heart; the masses of the 
people were for a long time deceived, and many still remain under the 
fatal delusion ; notwithstanding that every promise for the restoration 
of the Union has been broken, and that blessed consummation put more 
than ever remote by an insane policy, which looks to the sudden emanci- 
pation of four millions of negroes, and their elevation to the condition of 
white men. Feeble man warring in blind fanatical fury, against the im- 
mutable laws of God. whose wisdom is made manifest in an inequality 
in creation " spreading through all life, extending through all extent," 
observable alike in the vegetable, the mineral, and the animal kingdoms, 
one seed producing a delicious fruit, another the deadly upas, the beauti- 
ful pearl taken from its ocean bed of innumerable and to tlie superficial 
mind, worthless, yet in the wise economy of nature, equally valuable peb- 
bles ; while in the higher order of creation we have a Milton and the 
babbling idiot, a Caligula, and a Howard, a Washington, and a Lincoln •' 

Nearly every vestige of the Constitutional guarantees to the citizen 
has been ignored, or crushed beneath the heel of tyrannical usurpatii>n. 

While the flag of our country is held aloft, as the symbol of the Union 
of the States, glittering in the splendor of its thirty-four stars, we have 
it semi-officially announced, by a high functionary of the administration, 
no less a personage than the Solicitor of the War De[)artment. that the 
light of ten at least of those stars, is to be extinguished. State lines, 
says Mr. Whiting, enforcing Charles Sumner's pet scheme, must be 
obliterated ; the domain reduced to a territorial condition ; its inhabitants 
made vassals, with no rights save those which the conqueror chooses to 
accord to them. Virginia! the Old Dominion! the "mother of States," 
the State whose very atmosphere is sacred as having first inflated the 
kings that gave pulsation to the great heart of Washington ; that caught 
his last expiring breath, and floated his pure spirit up to the eternal 
throne of heaven ; the State, wliose " sacred soil'.' — yes ! sacred, indeed, not- 
withstanding the derision in which the word has been profaned by Aboli- 
tion traitors, who hate the memory of the ddve- holder Washington — 
above whose name Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts, in a public lecture, 
has placed " on the scroll of fame," the name of Toussainl Louverture, 
the black demon of St. Domingo — whose sacred soil, I say, received 



28 "to all whom it may concern." 

Wasliinffton's precious mortal remains ! the State of Patrick Henry ! 
and where his immortal words were hurled against British tyranny — " As 
FOR ME, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE MR DEATH !" — the State of Jeflerson, 
Madison, Monroe, and a host of patriots and martyrs to civil liberty ! — the 
State that gave to the Union — a free and princely gift — all that Northwest 
Territory, from which have risen some of the grandest commonwealths in 
the coufi'deracy ! — the State, whose influence, statesmanship, and warriors, 
more than all others, contributed to achieve for us, and bequeathed to us, 
the priceless blessings of constitutional freedi>in I — this is the State, to 
say nothing of all the others, that Mr. Solicitor William Waiting — gorged 
with the swill of official patronige, puffed as a toad in his own conceit, 
redol(>nt of perfume from his darling Africans, with the heart of a spider, 
and the wisdom of a donkey — declares in five solid columns of type, must 
be reduced to a territorial condition ! Fellow-citizens of America, this 
is what is called, "■unconditional" unionism ! 

The next step was to abolitionize the army, by getting rid, under vari- 
ous pretexts, of as much as possible of the Democratic element among the 
field officers. Those who were known to be Democrats, incorruptible and 
true to the legitimate objects of the war, were, from time to time, removed, 
and their places filled with officers who sympathized with the Abolition 
projects of emancipation, confiscation, negro troops, and subjugation. 

Thus we find that McClellan, the idol of the army, who thrice saved 
the Capital from capture ; whose brilliant campaign in Western Vir- 
ginia caused him to be hailed by the public voice as the man for the occa- 
sion after the first Bull Run ; whose thorough military science first 
organized and then disciplined a splendid army, and compelled the enemy 
to abandon his strong position at Manassas; who, to splendid engineer- 
ing qualities, adds a thorough comprehension of the theory of war, 
understanding perfectly when caution or strategy is desirable, and when 
dashing impetuosity is necessary, with a temperament peculiarly adapted 
to eitlur; whose much-derided pick and spade enabled him to cap- 
ture the powerful fortifications at Yorktown with scarcely the loss of a 
battalion, and which .said pick and .spade have since been adopted by every 
general who has been succes.sful ; whose rapid movements forced the 
enemy to make a stand at Williamsburg, there to be beaten and discom- 
fited ; who, after driving the enemy into his capital, approached to within 
sight of its steeples, and who pledged his military reputation, that, if fur- 
nished with McDowell's Corps of forty thousand men, which had been 
promised him, and which was lying idly at Fredericksburg, he would march 
into the enemy's ca[iital in less than twelve hours after the word forward 
should be given ; who repelled the desperate as.sault on his left wing at Fair 
Oaks, although, to do so, a lack of sufficient troops required him to endan- 
ger his right and centre; whose brilliant achievement at Hanover Court 
House kept open the communication with McDowell's Corp.s in the anx- 
ious, though vain hope, that the Admini.stration would give him the troops, 
in expectation of receiving which his military plans had been adopted; who, 
when finally abandoned to his fate in those dismal pestilential swampa 
of the Chickahominy, his brave army daily reduced by sickness and death, 



"to all whom it may C'ONCKKN. 2'.) 

and wliilo tlie cnouiy, kno\viii<j Lis wcnkncss and its cause, was f^atlicring 
up from every quarUsr iiu army to crush liiui — froui C\>riiitli wIkic tiicy 
doliberately waliicd away from Hallcck, and from tlu- 8lu-iiandoali N'allcy 
where Banks had been driven off by Stonewall Jackson — with military 
genius, cool brain, and bravo heart, and while assaulted l)y overwhelming 
odds, swung his army around over thirty miles of territory, with but one 
I'oad for his trains, and after seven days of continuous and desperate 
assaults upon his lines, safely encamped his gallant siddiei'fe upon the 
banks of the James River, thus executing a retreat, which, should he 
gain a hundred battles, history will record as the grandest and most 
glorious of his military achievements ; who — when General Pope, the pet 
of the Administration, " whose head-quarters were in the saddle," whose 
" strategy was to find the enemy," and who knew no such thing in mili- 
tary science as "base lines of retreat," was forced by General Lee to 
learn that lesson, behind the fortifications which ilcClellan's pick and 
spade had prepared for him around Washington — was called with trem- 
ulous accents, through pallid and quivering lips to save, as twice be- 
fore he had saved, the Capital from capture, gathered up with ama- 
zing rapidity the scattered, disheartened, and demoralized forces of a 
routed army, marched against the victorious and exultant foe, drove 
him from his well selected position at South Mountain, followed him rap- 
idly and again attacked and routed him at Antietam, thus saving Pennsyl- 
vania and Maryland from the devastation of invasion and the Capital 
from capture ; then, giving his weary soldiers a brief and ai)S()lutely 
necessary respite for recuperation, and to obtain shoes for their naked 
feet, crossed the Potomac in pursuit, took possession of the numerous 
mountain gaps, and while the whole country was excited to exultation in 
admiration of his triumphant march — suddenly, to the amazement of sol- 
diers and civilians, during the prevalence of a violent snow-storm, re- 
ceived an order at his camp, directing him to report at Trenton, New 
Jersey ! 

The blinding snow-drifts that eddied round the tents of that brave Po- 
tomac Army, chilled their manly forms, but under the vigilant care of 
their beloved counnander, their hearts were warm. This order from 
Washington was an ice-bolt driven against every soldier's and civilian's 
heart, who still fondly clung to the hope of a restored Union under the 
Constitution of our Fathers, and desired to see the war conducted accord- 
ing to the principles of humanity and civilization. 

And so might fame sound her trumijet in eulogizing strains of Buell, 
and Fitz John Porter, and Naglee, and Andi-ew Porter, and Burns (not 
Burnside who distinguished himself only in capturing what was onco 
regarded as an impregnable fortress, to wit, the DOMICILE OF AN 
American citizen, and taking prisoner its garrison in the person of 
Clement L. Vallandigham). but a braver soldier and a better man, a 
gentleman as well as a soldier, who knows tlie value and loves with true 
devotion the institutions of his country ; and a host of others who have 
been suspended under various shallow pretexts. 

The places of these officers have been filled with some honorable excep 



30 "to all whom it may concern." 

tioii^, Imt \vlicrcv(»r it \v;is practioahlc, u'ith inon wlio have provod snbsor- 
vicut tools and parasitcH at tlu^ footstool of power. A majority of the 
field officers in the higher ranks are of the stripe of Butler, Iligginson, 
Hunter, Shurz. Hooker, whose campaign against McClellan before the 
War Investigating Committee at Washington, was about as successful as 
his campaign against Kichniond via Chancellorsville ; and McNeill and 
Rousseau, who in a public speech in Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1863, 
spoke of the " Copperheads and traitors who go about cheering for Mc- 
Clellan." 

Having got the army iirmly in hand by means of this system among 
the officers, tlie Administration proceeded gradually to bolder and more 
shameful invtisions of the rights of the people. It would be merely su- 
pererogator}' to recapitulate. Not a man or woman, and scarcely a child, 
who is not familiar with these constantly recurring and most atrocious 
assaults upon the liberty of the citizen. When I use the term liberty, I 
do not mean licentiousness. I speak of undoubted, indefeasible rights, 
which Webster said belonged to the people as undoubtedly and "as natu- 
rally as the right to breathe, and the right to eat." 

Mr. Lincoln boldly assumes, in his letter to tlie Ohio committee, of 
which Mr. Pendleton was chairman, that, in time of war, he becomes the 
embodiment of all three of the co-oi-dinate branches of Government — the 
law maker, the law interpreter, and the law executor ! He goes even a 
step further, and makes laws unknown to our system of jurisprudence — 
the law of banishment, for instance — and he executes this self-established 
edict daily, upon all classes of citizens, through his minions sometimes, 
and occasionally — as in the case of Mr. Vallandingham — by a direct order 
from himself. Yet Mr. Lincoln has taken a solemn oath to "preserve, 
protect, and defend" a Constitution whose eighth Amendment reads thus : 

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessivt; fines imposed, nor 
cruel and unusual punishments inHicted." 

The Constitution ordains (in Article 2d of the Amendments) that, 

" The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be in- 
fri titled." 

Vi't Mr. Lincoln has deprived tlie i>eople, in whole districts far remote 
from scenes of hostilities, of this solemnly declared right. 

The Constitution declan^s that, 

"la all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a 
speedy and pul)lic trial, by an impartial jury of the 8tate and district 
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have 
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and 
cause of the accusation ; to l)e confronted with the witnesses against 
him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, 
and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated every one of these provisions in thou- 
sands of iu^laiiccs. 

The Con.-tliution declares that, 

"No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous 
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in 



"to aij. witom it may cokckkx." 31 

cases arising in tho land or naval forces, or in the mililia, when in uclual 
service in time of war or public danger." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated this l>ene(ic( iit provision. 
' The Constitution declares (Art. 4, Amcii(liiuiit<) tluit, 

'• The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, 
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be vio- 
lated ; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, sup|)orted 
by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched 
and the persons or things to be seized." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated, in numerous instances, this wise pro- 
vision. The Constitution declares, in the third Amendment, that, 

" No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house, without 
the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to In- pre- 
scribed by law." 

Yet Mr. -Lincoln, through his subordinates, violated this sacred pro- 
visions in numerous instances. 

The Constitution declares, in the first Amendment, that, 

" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion 
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of 
speech, or of the press ; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, 
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln is constantly incarcerating some, and I)ani.>liing 
others, whose manhood will not succumb to tyrannical usurpation, pre- 
ferring death itself to a craven surrender of liberty. 

The Constitution provides that, Congress alone shall have power to 
suspend the writ of habeas corpus — that great bulwark against oppres- 
sion. And this is manifest, from the fact that the allusion to its suspen- 
sion is found among the negative Congressional provisions. Tlie words 
are in the fourth clause of the ninth Section of Article 1, and read 
thus : 

" Th^ privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, 
unless when in cases of reliellion or invasion, the pul)lic safety may re-, 
quire it." 

That is. Congress shall not have power to suspend it except in desig- 
nated cases, and for a specific time ; but where is the shadow of authority 
giving to Congress a right to delegate this stupendous power of a sweeping 
suspension to a co-ordinate branch of the Government, exti'nding a 
power, in fact, which it does not itself possess ? Monstrous perversion of 
the evident meaning of tlie clause ! Besides, the design evidently was, 
that the writ might be temporarily suspended only in districts where 
actual hostilities .should exist; where, in fact, ju<lieial authority migiit 
become too feeble, because of violent commotion in any particular dis- 
trict, to afford protection to the citizens. 

Is there any such commotion in tlie States of New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, or Ohio, as to render it necessary to the public safety, that 
every citizen of these conunonwealths shall be made liable to arrest by a 
deputy provost-marshal ; — perhaps, by mistake, and, perhaps, from the 



32 "to all whom it m\y conukrx." 

malice of some informant, who may seek a conveniont method of wreaking 
a petty vengeance ; — and the innocent victim hurried off, ignorant even 
of the nsiture of the accusation — thrown into a fortress, and his case, it 
may be, forgotten by the tyrants, through whose infamous despotism he 
may languish even unto death ? 

Hence, in his proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus, Mr. 
Lincoln has violated another provision of the Constitution. 

Sections, Art. 1, of the Constitution, provides " for organizing and dis- 
ciplining the militia, and for governing such part of tliem as may be em- 
ployed in the service of the United States, re^ervinsrio the States, respect- 
ively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the 
militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress." 

Now, no legal sophistry, or hair-splitting, can so impose upon common 
sense, as to induce the belief that Mr. Lincoln has not violated this pro- 
vision of the Constitution, by sanctioning a conscription which creates a 
huge consolidated army, in whose ranks, all the States ma.y be repre- 
sented in each company of each regiment. Thus the New York and 
Pennsylvania soldier, and the Vermont and Massachusetts, and Oliio and 
Michigan and Wisconsin men, may be mixed up in every company ; de- 
stroying that State identity, that State pride, that State sympathy, and, 
not least, that State protection, which the framers of the Constitution 
designed both for the efficiency of the army, in fostering State emulation, 
and to guard against that consolidation, which might lead to centraliza- 
tion aud usui-patiou of the legitimate sovereignty of the States. 

The Constitution requires (Section 3, Article 2d) that the President 
shall " take care that the laws he faithfully executed.'^ 

May it not be asserted, truthfully, that Mr. Lincoln haw "taken care" " 
that the laws shall not be faithfully executed ? 

Witness the arrest and incarceration of that eminent jurist and fearless 
patriot, the venerable Judge Carmichael, for " faithfully" maintaining the 
law, under the responsibility imposed by his judicial oath. 

The Constitution declares (Section 1, Article 3) : That "the judicial 
power of. the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and 
in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and 
establish." And (in Section 2, of the same Article) : " The judicial power 
shall extend to all cases in law or equity." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln has violated this provision by assuming judicial powers. 

The Constitution (in Section 2, Article 3, 3d clause), declares that 
''The trial of all crimes, except in cas(\s of impeaclunent, shull be by 
jury, and such trial shall be held in the State, where the said crimes shall 
have been committed." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln arrests men in one State for alleged crime, and sends 
them to a fortress in another State, without a trial in either place ; and, 
furthermore, banishes men into " the enemies' country," thereby recog- 
nizing the Southern Confederacy, while maintaining that the States com- 
posing it are still within the Union, and subject to the laws of Congress, 
such as emancipation, confiscation, &c., &c. 

The Constitution declares (in Section 3, Article 3), that " no person shall 



" TO ALL WHOM IT MAY COXCKKN." o3 

be convicted of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the 
same overt act, or on confession in open court." Of course, the clause 
means, tliat if tlio conviction shall be bj'- witnesses, they shall bo examined 
m open court. T have heard the puerile argument advanced, that while 
the "confession" of an accused must be in " open court," vet if convict- 
ed by "witnesses," it may be before a court-martial, or a provost-mar- 
shal's board. To such wretchc^d shifts are tliey driven to i>alliate their 
iniquity, torturing and perverting the plainest language ever written. 

Mr. Lincoln has clearly violated this important protection to those 
accused, but guiltless of the high crime of treason. 

The Constitution declares (in Section 3, Article 3, second clause), that 

"No attainder of treason shall wm-k corruption of blood, or forfeiture, 
except during the life of the person attainted." 

Yet Mr. Lincoln, by signing the Confiscation Bill of the last Congress, 
has violated this provision, not only in the natural and practical effect of 
the law, but according to the interpretation now claimed for it, by his 
warmest political adherents and admirers. 

The Constitution declares (Section 3, Article 4), that 

" No new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any 
other State." 

Yet the State of Virginia has been split in twain, so far as the abolition 
majority in Congress and Mr. Lincoln has been able to do it. 

The Constitution declares (in the second clause of Section 3, Article 4), 
that 

"Nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice 
any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.''^ 

Has not the partition of Virginia "prejudiced" the claims of that "par- 
ticular State ?" And inasmuch as Mr. Lincoln and his followers pretend 
that the war is waged to restore the States, including Virginia, to the 
Union, what becomes of this express and emphatic declaratory clause ? 
In signing that bill, Mr. Lincoln violated this clause of the Constitution. 

Article 9 of the Amendments declares, 

" The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." 

Yet, Mr. Lincoln, either wilfully or iguorantly, has " construed" 
numerous important provisions according as "military necessity" or 
expediency, rendered it convenient, and against the interpretation of plain 
common sense. Witness the attempt to have the electoral vote of several 
States, controlled by one-tenth of the population. 

Article 10 of the Amendments declares that : 

" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, 
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
or to the people." 

Yet, the sovereign rights of the States are violated every day by Mr. 
Lincoln, under the plea of necessity, expediency, and by gross perversion 
of the language of the instrument. 

The Constitution provides (in Section 2, Article 4, 3d clause, ) that, 
3 



34 "to all whom it may coxceun,'" 

" No person hold to service or labor in one State, under the laws there- 
of, escaping- into another, shall, in consequence of any law or rej^ulation 
therein, be discliarged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered 
up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." 

Xow, Mr. Lincoln is bound by his oath to see that this provision is just 
as faithfully observed in times of commotion and civil war, so far as it 
extends to citizens not ill rebellion against the United States, as in time 
of peace, yet the clause has become obsolete. In fact, the emancipation 
proclamation virtually wipes it out as with a sponge. Hence, Mr. Lin- 
coln has violated this provision. 

Finally, the Constitution declares (in the 2d cluuse of the 6th Article) 
that, 

" This Constitution and the laws which shall bo made in pursuance 
thereof," "shall In' the SUPREME law of the land; and the judges in every 
State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or laws of 
any State to the contrary notwithstanding." 

And yet Mr. Lincoln has audaciously assumed that his will shall be the 
sovereign and supreme law. And judges in the several States who have 
acted in conformity with their oaths to support this provision of the Con- 
stitution, have been, by hirelings and parasites, denounced as traitors to 
their Government, and even the judicial ermine desecrated in the inflic- 
tion upon them of personal violence. In permitting this, Mr. Lincoln 
has violated the sixth Article of the Constitution. 

Now, my fellow-countrymen, if any of you will take a copy of the 
Constitution of the United States and read it carefully, you will find that 
there is scarcely a fragment of it left. The President and his partj^ in 
Congress have torn it into ribbons. Will it be said that these innova- 
tions are warrantable on account of the civil strife in which we are 
engaged. How utterly fallacious is this excuse ! These are the very 
times when the sacred provisions of the Constitution should be most jeal- 
ously guarded ; when all should cling to it as " the mariner clings to 
the last plank, when night and the tempest surround him." What would 
be thought of the commander of a vessel who, when the hurricane was 
raging, and his tempest-tossed bark straggling in the trough of the sea, 
and knowing that he was in the vicinity of dangerous reefs, should throw 
overboard his chart and his compass ? 

Time and space admonish me that I must bring this narrative to a 
close. A folio voIuuk; would not contain all the usurpations of this most 
extraordinary Administration. The servants of the people have assumed 
to be their masters, and have so conducted themselves during the last 
three years. 

The Hercules of American liberty is now writhing in the toils of the 
anaconda of despotism. Bravely the young gi;int struggles for mastery. 
While the slimj- coils twine round his lithe and graceful limbs, millions 
beh<dd the desperate encounter, and the hearts of freemen throb with al- 
ternate hope and fear, as their prayers ascend to Almighty God, that 
vititory may perch on the brow of liberty's champion, and the monster 
be crushed within his grasp. 



"to all whom ri' may conckkn." 35 

Mon are as nothinjj^ iu this ^vvnt crisis. Whole generations of men 
pass, in their ngiihir order, into tiio sepulchri- of oblivion. But few in- 
dividuals live, oven in memory, beyond a suee.eeding generation. Yet, in 
the progress of time, there are epoch.s wliich live for ages; to bo re- 
ferred to by posterity with eilher blessings or curses. Wo are passing 
tlirougli one of those periods now ! The cause of American liberty is a 
sacred trust, which each generation of Americans is bound by every 
principle of honor to transmit unimpaired to its successor. This prin- 
ciple must not be surrendered now. If it should, upon this generation 
will rest the merited execration of those that are yet in the womb of 
time. 

It is gratifying to reflect that the virtue and good sense of the Democ- 
racy have been so signally manifested, in the selection of those in whose 
persons these great principles are, as we tru-st, to be vindicated. 

Why should I particularly allude to those candidates, my fellow- 
countrymen ? You would not have me pronounce a eulogy upon George 
B. McClellan ! There are some things whose attractions are not en- 
hanced by eulogium : they speak for themselves. To say that the dia- 
mond is pure, and clear, and sparkling ; that no base material can corrode 
its fair surface, or cloud its lustre, would not enhance the ju.st admiration 
entertained for the jewel. Then why write words of commendation of 
one whose bravery and skill while iu servicis and whose modest deport- 
ment and good taste while in retirement, have commended themselves to 
every unprejudiced mind ? There he stands, clothed in the mail of a 
spotless reputation, from youth to vigorous manhood — invulnerable ! 
Let the shafts of Abolition malice be hurled with all the force which im- 
potent rage may lend to desperation. Blunted and broken against his 
impenetrable armor, they fall harmless at his feet ; save only those which, 
glancing, inflict ghastly wounds upon his more vulnerable adversaries. 

As much might justly be said of George H. Pendleton : the profound 
lawyer — the able and fearless statesman — the C'liristian gentleman. "Who 
dare assail him ? Even Malice is dumb, and the tongue of Slander pal- 
sied in the effort ! 

Thanks — most hearty thanks — to the gentlemen of the Convention, who 
gave us candidates like these at this important crisis. 

The responsibility now rests with the people. See to it that every 
RIGHTFUL VOTE IS DEPOSITED IN THE BALLoT-iiOX. Let every man 
constitute himself a vigilance committee. Tlie loss of a ballot must not 
be thought of. The jewels that sparkle in kingly diad«'ms will not com- 
pare in value with the American freeman's ballot on the eighth of No- 
vember next. 

Do but your duty faitlifully, my suffering fellow-countrymen, and when 
the morning of the ninth of November shall dav/n upon our beloved land, 
the shouts of exultant joy, resounding through beautiful valleys, echoing 
and re-echoing amidst mountain crags, reverberating through the corri- 
dors of the Capitol and within the chambers of the Wliite mansion, 
shall remind usurpers that the American people are still the sovereign 
people, and the only Sovereign that can be pei'mitted to reign on the 
sacred soil of America. 



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